


Blue Moon

by Guede



Series: Teen Wolf Rejected Story Ideas [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biting, Dom/sub Undertones, Established Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mystery, Overstimulation, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 11:10:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8011378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About half of an intended suspense one-shot, where Peter starts to suspect something is not quite right with Stiles.  Discontinued because I wasn't satisfied with the "gotcha" plot twist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Moon

“Hey, sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” Stiles mumbles, stroking his hand across Peter’s back as he crawls into bed.

Peter resists the urge to acknowledge the other man, because truly, it is an ungodly hour and while Peter has occasionally pretended to various degrees of morality, he has never subscribed to that nonsense about sleep deprivation bringing you closer to virtue. He might personally prefer to deal with the darker shades of grey when fully aware and mentally capable, but that’s just him, and he has no illusions about the rest of humanity’s inclinations. He’s certainly benefited from inattention often enough.

But, unfortunately, that path is escaping him now, as Stiles lumps up the blankets and lets in the cooler air under them, shakes the mattress till Peter finally has to twist his head to the side to keep it on the pillow. “What on earth were you doing?” he mutters.

“You don’t want to know,” Stiles says, his voice rich with irritation. His elbow juts unevenly into Peter’s arm as he slithers under the sheets, and then his foot grazes Peter’s shin.

Neither of those are really that painful, or even that noticeable, but every disturbance is inching Peter further from the lovely, comfortable dream that’d had him warmly wrapped up just a few moments ago. He grunts, shifting in on himself as the blanket briefly tugs up to expose his hip, and then gives up and rolls over to face Stiles. “That usually means I _should_ know.”

When Stiles snorts, his annoyance is somewhat leavened by a knowing amusement. “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure that that’s my line often enough you could cut me a little slack,” he says. 

His hand had left Peter, but it drifts back now, tickling Peter’s spine under the guise of pulling the sheets down over Peter’s leg. Then it finds its way up into Peter’s hair, fingers tangling thoroughly in the strands as Peter sighs and leans forward, letting the plane of Stiles’ chest ride his head up onto the other man’s shoulder. “A dismissal and an _ad hominem_ attack, for shame,” Peter tsks. “It’s as if you haven’t learned a thing from me.”

“It’s nice to see you admit you’re the role model for how not to take over the world,” Stiles says, with a lingering tug of a caress at Peter’s hair.

Peter doesn’t even deign to respond to that, but just continues his nuzzling up Stiles’ throat. If his lover wants to play it that way, well, he has other ways, too. He _is_ a werewolf.

Of course, Stiles knows that too, but he doesn’t push Peter away. On the contrary, he helps pull Peter’s head further over his shoulder, turning slightly so he can tip his head back against the pillows and allow Peter to sniff and lick into each dip and curve of his neck. He stripped down to just a loose pair of pajama pants before getting in, and as Peter slumps over him, Peter can feel the roll of his prick and balls between them, just a few thin layers of cotton in the way.

“Anything interesting?” Stiles says.

“Oh, very,” Peter murmurs, continuing to sniff the air from Stiles’ skin. And he’s being honest—the slow, gradually insistent drag of Stiles’ fingers through his hair is eating into his attention, but not so much that he’s lost focus of why they’ve ended up here in the first place.

He smells soap, but just a trace, and mostly over the chin and cheekbones, as if Stiles splashed his face before coming to bed. Stiles’ hair smells of the usual city odors: gasoline tang, concrete and steel grit, coffee stains and an undifferentiated whiff of multitudes. And there’s that musty plastic of that damned jeep he insists on keeping, even though the only thing holding it together these days is the kind of black magic even Peter shies away from.

And—and—and there’s a note under all of that, evanescent, constantly evaporating just as Peter thinks he’s got enough of a grasp on it to identify it. Tantalizing, he thinks off-hand, and he rubs his nose along Stiles’ skin, chasing it, trying to determine exactly what _is_ it that’s so…so pleasantly, insinuatingly gone, and eventually he realizes that he’s been rutting himself against Stiles for some time.

Certainly long enough to get an enthusiastic response: Stiles’ hand has dropped from Peter’s hair to Peter’s shoulder, and his other hand has come up, coasting across Peter’s chest to hook itself under Peter’s arm as he hitches up along Peter’s thigh. He’s gasping and groaning, and when Peter slows just for a second, just out of bemusement, he drops back, a look of betrayal on his face, and then he reaches down and seizes Peter’s cock. The little shit.

“The _cocksucking_ little shit, thank you,” Stiles laughs, twisting them over. Though it’s not Peter’s cock his tongue then applies itself to.

It’s Peter’s shoulder, and then Stiles’ teeth join in, catching at the skin just enough to stir growls out of Peter’s throat. He grabs a handful of Stiles’ pajamas and pulls, and then flattens himself down between the man’s sprawled legs, silencing any complaints about shredded clothes and werewolf claw abuse. It’s a warm night, and anyway, Peter rarely bothers with clothing in bed, and the sum result of that is that they both stiffen, then groan, their bodies swaying towards each other.

That smell—it’s still filling Peter’s nose. It seems _stronger_ , perversely enough, but Peter still can’t quite pin it down. It’s light but not floral, and yet it has an earthiness—Stiles arches up, his arm slinging around Peter’s neck, and then hauls Peter down into a hard, urgent kiss. At the same time his knees come up to squeeze demandingly around Peter’s waist; their cocks slide against each other, before the slant of Stiles’ thigh directs Peter’s into the soft, tightening crook where thigh meets torso. Peter’s breathing hard now, drinking gallons of heated air directly from Stiles’ mouth, and he can still smell that scent and he just can’t.

He’s pressing Stiles back into the bed, his hands roaming down over the other man’s belly, just scratching a claw against the tender flesh there. Not enough to bleed, not even enough to redden, but Stiles shudders from it like Peter plunged a hand deep into his gut. Shudders and spreads his knees even more, not so much an invitation as a wordless order, his nails digging at Peter’s shoulders and back till Peter’s seated balls-deep in him, and then he rakes them viciously down to the hips. _He_ draws blood, spangles the air with the sharp scent of it.

Peter snarls and the planes of his face shift around the low vibration of it, then shift back. He can see himself reflected in Stiles’ eyes, and then he pulls back and he sees beyond his reflection, sees the deep, nearly endless wildness in the eyes themselves. He smells—

He smells his blood. He’s smelled it before. And anyway, with a werewolf, blood is like chocolate, good and bad and not uncommon. But—but he smells—he smells—

—there’s _something_ , his mind insists, but even as the thought comes, it’s falling apart, disappearing into the slick twisting heat of their bodies. Stiles’ mouth, pressed soft and tight to the underside of Peter’s chin. Peter’s own hands, wrenching apart Stiles’ buttocks so he can plunge that fraction deeper. And—

—and Peter loses it.

* * *

Stiles scruffs at his head, studying his phone, and then sighs and picks up his coffee mug. “I don’t know, I mean, we _could_ just do the usual routine and I can switch to a late shift so we can handle the bodies after work, but at a certain point I feel like we need to stop addressing the symptoms and actually deal with the problem. Maybe once we’re four bodies in. That seems like a good point, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Peter says mildly, just before flipping the last of the bacon onto the plate.

Before he’s gotten the stove turned off, half of that strip has disappeared. Stiles smiles gratefully at him with grease-shined lips; a faint whitish streak of half-rinsed soap is tracking over the back of the hand Stiles has wrapped around his mug, its lemony aroma mixing oddly with the almost-soured creamer he’d dumped into his coffee. He’s dressed for the day but as usual, it’s haphazard, with his shirt half-tucked, one trouser-leg’s cuff rolled and the other not, hair a fluffy, disheveled fuzz.

“I know. You’re just saying without saying, but if we do that, Stiles, we gotta go through Scott, and you _know_ Scott, he hates dead people,” Stiles says, still smiling. He tilts his head. “Well. Okay. That’s harsh. He doesn’t hate anybody, he’s Scott. But he strongly disfavors plans that increase the body count and, but I’m saying, I feel like a permanent end to these increases is good all around, you hear me?”

“Almost always,” Peter says, and then, when Stiles raises his brow, he snorts and turns to retrieve his own, rather cool, breakfast. “I go with you to the games and cheer in the appropriate places, Stiles. I think it’s a little much for you to also ask me to actually understand the sport.”

Stiles muffles his laugh into a napkin, scrubbing the grease off his mouth. Then he leans over for a kiss, only he stumbles slightly on Peter’s foot—he’s hardly the gawky teenager now, but mornings are still terrible for his coordination—so there’s a slight pause before their mouths meet.

Peter happens to breathe in just then, anticipating, and he smells the oily smoke of the bacon, the bitterness of the coffee, and…and he thinks on it, but then Stiles’ tongue is in his mouth and however long they’ve been together, he never ignores that. Never a farewell, no matter how casual it is; if the fate of his family has taught him anything, it’s that it could always end.

“You bringing me my lunch?” Stiles asks, leaning back.

“I think I can make the time,” Peter says.

Stiles rolls his eyes and reaches for his bag, then stops. “Shit,” he mutters. He starts to drop the bag strap, then sighs and slings that over his shoulder before turning back to Peter. “Actually, sorry, I just remembered. Lydia’s swinging by, we’re going out. You can come too if you want, but…well, she’s coming because she wants to talk about the maenads…”

“Again?” Peter says. “She still hasn’t gotten them to knuckle under?”

“Yeah, well,” Stiles says, pointed and sympathetic at the same time. He hesitates another second, then lifts his arm to lay the back of his hand against Peter’s throat. “I’ll try and get home early to make up for it, so we can squeeze in a round before Derek comes by. Sound good?”

“It’s reasonable,” Peter mutters, because ‘good’ really shouldn’t come with so many restrictions and riders, but on the other hand, it could be worse. He does appreciate that it’s not.

Stiles laughs, because he can follow Peter’s train of thought better than blood relations. His knuckles brush along Peter’s neck a last time, and then he swings out the door.

Something trails in his wake, prompting Peter to gaze after him. Peter might not care for farewells, but he’s not a dreamy-eyed fool, forever dwelling on what might have been. If there’s a chance he can affect future outcomes, he’d much rather spend his energies on that chance than on stewing in his own hopes—never again, he thinks, even if it’s largely become instinct these days.

He shakes himself, but the sense of…of something stays with him, even as he moves about to tidy up the kitchen and then to retrieve his own gear for the day’s work. It’s nagging, a half-formed thought he’d forgotten and now he remembers that he had had it, remembers the rough shape of it but not the detail. Maddening, even, and for a second he feels that crazed edge under his feet, sharp, almost exhilarating enough to ignore the awful drop that comes after.

Peter takes another deep breath, and then he really _does_ remember. The smell. He smelled something.

It’s not in the apartment now, he thinks reluctantly, after another moment of dithering. Not now that Stiles has left. And anyway, Stiles will be back, whatever Peter’s lingering phobias. He should have another shot at it.

* * *

At lunch, since Peter unfortunately will not be joining Stiles and Lydia—who still is unreasonably suspicious of him, despite the number of homicides he’s committed for Stiles’ benefit—he decides he’ll just eat at home. And since he’s there, he decides he’ll also do some tidying up in the bedroom.

Peter waves literally every article of clothing that Stiles owns under his nose, but doesn’t detect any unusual odors. He strips the bed and thoroughly whiffs the sheets, investigates the pile of shoes in the hallway closet, and then he checks all of Stiles’ usual niches for hiding things. He doesn’t turn up anything out of the ordinary.

Well. There is one thing, but it’s so unremarkable that he passes over it at first, and only goes back to it after mulling over his lack of results for a good hour. Really, it’s not even suspicion that drives him so much as his taking care that he’s done the laundry and freshly dusted and left all the other signs needed to justify his prying into things.

He goes back onto their balcony and pushes aside the pots of herbs till he’s reached the overturned planter in the center. When he tips it up, he uncovers a small jar of mountain ash dust, a pack of matches and two half-used candles, and a gun. He picks the gun up and turns it over to see the other side, and yes, that feather is still stuck to the underside. 

It’s small, barely the size of his thumb. Round, downy, from the breast and not the wing. Whitish, he thinks, although it’s clearly been under the pot long enough for soil-heavy moisture to have seeped into it and stained it. He sniffs at it and smells pigeon, which makes sense: they’re only a few blocks from a local park, and several of their neighbors have birdfeeders hanging from the balcony rails, despite the unfriendliness of causing bird shit to fall on the heads of the occupants in the next unit down. 

Peter twirls the feather between thumb and forefinger, thinking it over, and then he shakes his head at himself and flicks it over the rail. He replaces the other items under the planter and moves the pots back around to shield that from view. He still thinks that something is off, but he should be reviewing Stiles’ movements over the past few days, or breaking into Stiles’ phone, or any of the many more obvious channels than the cast-off of an urban parasite.

It’s nearly time to start dinner when Peter looks up from his laptop, where he’s been tapping his network of contacts for information on who Stiles has been speaking to lately—no one Peter didn’t already know about, and his frustration is only slightly relieved by how nervous his inquiries are making people—and remembers.

They’ve warded the balcony to keep away the birds. Stiles spent an aggravating number of lazy weekend afternoons, ignoring Peter’s invitations to do something more pleasurable, so he could experiment with runic combinations. Granted, that was months ago, but Peter is sure that the feather couldn’t have made it under the planter before then.

For a few more minutes Peter sits and considers it. Then he gets up and gets his car keys. He’ll be cutting it close, but he thinks he might just have the time to run to the grocery.

* * *

“God, that smells so good,” Stiles says, dropping his bag against the fridge on his way to slumping into Peter’s back.

Peter hums in acknowledgment, giving the pasta a last shake in the pan before decanting it into a bowl. He puts the pan back on the stove to cool down, then has to take a step to the side in order to reach the basil he’d chopped earlier for a garnish. Stiles makes a discontented noise, his arms coming up around Peter’s waist, and lets himself drag like dead weight behind Peter. The bridge of his nose rides up and down the bumps of Peter’s spine, stretching out the back of Peter’s shirt so that some of his breath starts to pass through the fabric.

“Extra garlic?” Stiles eventually mumbles, inching his head up. He takes his time about it, not pulling his chin over the top of Peter’s shoulder till Peter’s finished with the pasta and has washed his hands and is wrapping them in a towel.

“And chili flakes,” Peter says.

Stiles huffs in amusement, the edge of his lips just touching Peter’s ear. “I can totally hear that unspoken _barbarian_.”

“Now, now, that would be harsh, considering Italian cuisine’s hardly been codified for that long,” Peter says, clicking his tongue. He tosses the towel back behind the sink faucet, then twists half-around, pulling the bowl of pasta into his belly as he goes. “I think heretic might be more accurate.”

“Yeah, well, let’s get our blasphemy on already, I’m starving,” Stiles snorts, grabbing at the bowl.

It’s a large serving size, but Peter allows the other man to take it to the table. For himself, he gets another, smaller bowl out of the cabinet, and then digs up a couple forks as well. He passes one fork to Stiles so that the man doesn’t simply dive into the pasta with bare fingers, though it’s a close call.

“Sorry,” Stiles mumbles through a mouthful. He does twist his head aside so that Peter can scoop pasta for himself out of the other side of the bowl. “Sorry, it’s just I barely got anything for lunch.”

“Lydia didn’t like your idea for a forest rave with tranqs in the goat decoy?” Peter says sympathetically.

Stiles starts to roll his eyes, then stops. He shifts back and snags a napkin, wiping his mouth as Peter goes back to get them each a glass of juice. When Peter returns, Stiles grins in gratitude and then downs nearly half his glass in a single swallow.

“No, actually, she was interested, but then she got super-detail-oriented, you know,” Stiles says. He pauses and a strange, strained expression crosses his face. But before Peter can do more than stiffen, Stiles grimaces and turns his head and coughs into his shoulder. Then he reaches out—eagerly, Peter notes—and takes another long swallow of juice. “Ugh, okay, I promise she didn’t lay some sort of slow-working pig transformation curse on me.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear that, but I think we might want to avoid the Heimlich anyway,” Peter says. He sits down with his own glass and begins to twirl the pasta strands around his fork. “So she wanted extra impact evidence?”

“More like, she wanted to know how were we gonna prove the goat was a dummy all along, and not a real goat, and she brought up how those animal-rights activists had that demonstration just three towns over and the _last_ thing we need is to turn into a horror movie set for well-meaning protesters, and…” Stiles dives back into his pasta, while his hand makes squawking motions. “She’s got a point but we’ve got time to research and test and stuff, which is why the meeting invite subject line said ‘research plan formation’ and…I love her. I just think if I’m gonna get quizzed on the merits of different types of flesh substitutes, I should get to eat my banh mi.”

Peter makes more sympathetic noises and eats his own dinner. Stiles rambles on for a while longer, going over the irritations of the day, and Peter encourages the man to keep going with the occasional well-placed observation. He also doesn’t take any more pasta, though he does put his fork into the bowl from time to time, stirring the strands so Stiles will continue to eat without looking for Peter to ‘have his share.’ Charming habit of his, and one that Peter very much appreciates, but for both of them to be stuffed would counteract Peter’s goals.

He’s not poisoning Stiles. Well, not _really_ , not as long as the man sitting across from him is, in fact, Stiles. If so, then the garlic and the holy basil—fortunate that Stiles really has no reverence for Italian cuisine standards—and salt in the pasta, as well as the blessed water in the juice, should have no effect whatsoever.

Which is the case. A good half-hour in and Stiles is just then winding down, asking after Peter’s own day—and whatever Lydia put him through, he still managed to get wind of Peter’s inquiries in the supernatural community. He doesn’t suspect he’s the cause of them; Peter doesn’t even have to suggest it for Stiles to assume that Peter’s worried about some enemy of the Hales, who inevitably end up targeting their acquaintances as well.

“Sometimes I think we might as well just give up on deterrence,” Stiles mutters, dipping a finger into the bowl and running it around for the sauce. “I mean, Scott’s right, cutting down on confrontations period is better, but if I have to explain to somebody _one more time_ that yeah, actually, I _did_ just kick their ass so stop looking at Derek or you already—no offense, you’re very look-at-able, but…”

“None taken,” Peter smiles, leaning forward. He swipes his finger just inside the bowl rim; the sauce might have been unorthodox, but by any objective measure, it’d turned out quite well and he’s not inclined to let it go to waste.

Though before he can lift his finger to his mouth, Stiles takes hold of his hand and then bobs forward, tongue flicking out and curling about Peter’s nail a beat before Stiles’ lips close over both. Stiles is grinning back, conspiratorial and excited, two of his best moods.

Peter shifts backwards, taking his hand with him. He doesn’t mean to discourage the other man; on the contrary, he’s maneuvering them out of the way of the table leg, which is inconveniently intervening. Stiles smartly takes the invite, twisting out of his seat and then rounding the table corner as Peter stands. He’s still sucking on Peter’s finger, as if he hasn’t thoroughly removed all traces of sauce.

“I do appreciate the concern, Stiles,” Peter says. He takes a step from the table, then reaches back for the empty pasta bowl. “But like I said, I’ve seen no real cause for alarm yet, and like _you_ said, I think we still have the time to—”

“Oh, my God, you wanna _talk_ through it again?” Stiles says. In the middle he lets Peter’s finger pop wetly out of his mouth, and then he pushes forward so suddenly that Peter doesn’t have time to lower his hand; his fingertip brushes a shining trail of spit down the side of Stiles’ jaw. “Come on, already.”

He says, as his hands drop down to tuck into Peter’s pants pockets, as his mouth presses insistently against Peter’s mouth. Peter puts his hand on the table rather than the bowl, then drags it backward as he stumbles, swings on his heel to have his back to the table edge.

Stiles is devouring his mouth, greedy and irresistible, bearing down hard enough that when Peter forces his jaw up just to get space for breath, he ends up with blood sleeking his tongue. It doesn’t put either of them off—if anything, Stiles gets more forceful, his hands straining the seams of Peter’s pockets, nails scraping through the thin silk to leave burning trails along Peter’s thighs.

Forceful. The word sits oddly in Peter’s head. He gasps for breath again, distracted, and Stiles pulls back. Looks at Peter, eyes dark and hungry and—and—something else, something other, but before Peter can place it, let alone react to it, Stiles has dropped his head again and gone directly for the kill.

Biting Peter’s neck, rough, kneading bites all along its length, while below his hands jerk free of the pockets, only to come around to jerk open their flies. He rocks Peter against the table again and Peter’s hand moves out blindly and finds the bowl.

It clatters loudly. Peter starts a little, shaken out of a daze he hadn’t felt come over him, and drives himself onto Stiles’ _sharp_ teeth. 

Instinct freezes him. He hangs for a moment, caught, feeling his skin give under the pressure as if it’s given everything away. But Stiles—Stiles is motion, all motion, palming Peter’s bared hips and buttocks, wetting Peter’s throat with the flat of his tongue, twisting his own body against Peter’s like he means to eventually slide through that break he’s made, slip into Peter like he’d slip into a well-worn coat. His breath comes harshly between his teeth, in drenching waves over the already spit-slicked skin, and when he finally releases Peter’s neck, the in-rush of cooler air is enough of a shock on its own to make Peter groan.

The table is cooler still, like a slab of ice under Peter. He can feel his belly tightening up away from it as he scrabbles with his hands, then stakes his claws for a grip. He’s turned around, he thinks, turned and bent and spread and he’s just started to come back into himself enough to wonder when Stiles comes down on top of him again.

Scratching, he thinks, and then he feels the hands pressing his thighs apart and he knows that no, those are the man’s teeth marking up his back. Running across his shoulder blades, rutting deep into the striations of the muscles, catching on their edges as they spasm. He groans again, hanging onto his fingertips for all that he has the whole table to support himself. His cheekbone grinds against the table; he can feel the flesh there numbing, and yet he can’t bring himself to lift his head.

He’s opened up, taken on—a gravelly, snarling sound escapes him as Stiles sheaths into him. It’s not gentle and for a second that cuts through. He thinks, his mind clearing—and a hand grips the nape of his neck, pushing him down. Loose grip, loose enough so the thumb and first two fingers can groove over and over again into the hollows behind his ears, catching and tearing strands of hair, but the pressure’s enough to crush the heat from him, send it spiraling out in heavy pants, sweat-slicking shakes of his body. He almost misses when Stiles bites back into him, just along the hairline.

His cock’s flattened beneath him, and rubbing itself raw against the table whenever there is a little space. Sweat alone isn’t enough to ease the friction, but it provides plenty of salt to prolong the burning. Red fever flares behind Peter’s closed eyelids and he snarls again, twisting in place, and counter-fires blaze back through him, starting where he’s speared and shooting down melting nerves.

Stiles laughs in his ear. It’s the same laugh—it’s the laugh Peter’s heard for years and years but now, somehow, it’s new and it makes Peter shudder with something ice-cold enough to slice straight through his lust-addled mind. Peter shudders, and as he shudders, Stiles rears up over him and presses down on his neck so hard he sees spots of black in his vision.

He's not coming, the other man is, but still, Peter feels as limp and wrung-out as if he had. His cock’s a frustrated, unfulfilled ache beneath him and he hisses to give its need something of a voice, but when Stiles slides out of him, he can barely muster a shiver. Stiles laughs again, his fingers dipping back between Peter’s buttocks, swirling a little in the mix of sweat and come he’s pulled out with him, and then he turns Peter over.

Peter sees his face for just a second, as the man leans over him, one of Peter’s knees hefted over his shoulder. Young, cocky, comfortably familiar—and yet there’s something—something in the eyes, Peter thinks. Something _hungry_ —Stiles drops onto his cock, as ravenous for it as he was for Peter’s mouth, and Peter gasps and arches and his eyes fix themselves instead on the light above the table.

It’s too bright for that, his vision fills with white and then he closes scorched, tearing eyes, jabbing his claws back into the table as Stiles’ fingers push back into him. He’s worked two ways, both of them merciless in a casual, almost flippantly demanding way, as if—as if Stiles not just expects but thinks he’s _owed_ a climax from Peter, and just the idea of that, the skeleton of it, barely-coherent fragments pulling together in Peter’s shaken mind—that’s enough. That does it.

It does, Peter thinks, lying across the table. It does, and then it does, and when he senses Stiles’ silence turn from amused to concerned, he thinks he might just be worried, too.

“Hey,” Stiles says. “Um, Peter?”

Peter opens his eyes, and a bright smile of relief spreads over Stiles’ face. For several seconds it’s just about all Peter can see, with his sight slowly fading from that strange, nearly monochromatic state that comes with squeezing ones’ eyes too tightly shut.

“Hey,” Stiles says. He’s climbed onto the table, holding himself over Peter, but now he drapes himself down. Loose-limbed and malleable, his usual posture, so nonthreatening that Peter’s wolf instincts discount the fact that his head is higher. “Hey, there. Took you out, huh. Guess it was a harder day than you were letting on.”

“Well,” Peter says, and his voice is thin and raspy. He swallows, then feels his mouth twitch to a smile as Stiles reaches over and massages his throat. “No rest for the wicked, as they say.”

Stiles laughs, and rearranges himself on Peter, moving limbs as Peter shifts. Making his weight easier on Peter, or so he thinks. His hand finds its way under Peter’s head, pillowing it so Peter can look at him. “You kind of freaked me out there. I don’t think you usually get that catatonic, but I guess I must be getting better at this.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose,” Peter says, and then he has himself smile again. “The bedroom, then?”

“I was kind of planning on finishing up season three,” Stiles says, with a half-glance towards the living room TV. But then he looks at Peter again and shrugs. “Well, what the hell, that’s what tablets and streaming are for, right?”

“So obliging,” Peter murmurs.

“Hey, whatever you want,” Stiles says.

He bends over and kisses Peter. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, how the kiss goes, and then he pushes back and helps Peter up. He’s thoughtful, Stiles, for all his feints at amorality.

Peter thinks it over, and decides they may as well go to bed.

* * *

The next day, once Stiles has left for the day, Peter rearranges his schedule and then pays his nephew a visit. “Have you noticed anything different about Stiles?” he asks.

“Like what?” Derek says, frowning at his car instead of looking at Peter. “He turn himself green again?”

Peter considers the other man, then the sticky, thick, faintly bluish smears coating the bumper of Derek’s car. Then he bends down, takes his nephew by the elbow, and hauls Derek indoors.

“Behavior,” Peter says, once Derek’s satisfied his need to rail at Peter continuing to ruin his life. “Mannerisms. Things he’s said. Actually, _have_ you seen him at all in the past few days?”

Derek jerks clear of Peter and glowers back, while brushing irritably at the parts of his coat that Peter had gripped. “You couldn’t have called and asked that first before you barged over?” he says. Then he sighs. “Yeah, I’ve seen him, at the patrol review and yesterday when he came over with Scott. What are you looking for?”

Peter breathes in deeply, carefully, and then lets it out with an infinite degree of patience that Derek will never, ever appreciate. “Did you notice any changes in him?”

“No, but I try not to talk to him that much, you know that,” Derek mutters. He continues to pluck and tug at his coat, his irritation eliding into a wary curiosity. They’ve been at odds more than enough times for him to be able to recognize when Peter’s bringing him something out of genuine concern, and when Peter does it simply because flustering his nephew pleases him.

At least, Peter would like to credit Derek with that much intelligence, but Peter finds himself drawing on that well of patience again within the minute. “So when he talked to _other_ people, he seemed himself.”

“Yeah, I guess—do you think he’s possessed?” Derek says, pricking alert.

“He’s not, I’ve checked,” Peter says.

Derek does not stand down. “So you _did_ think he was.”

Peter cracks his knuckles in lieu of cracking open his nephew’s skull. “Derek. I’ve ruled that out. Can we please—”

“So what else is he doing?” Derek says, prowling over. He shoots Peter a suspicious look, but then goes on past Peter, to the nearest window where he checks the latch and then does something that causes all the window frames to blaze briefly with a white halo: a privacy spell. “Is he hiding something?”

“I think that’s what I just asked you to help me figure out,” Peter says.

“And I’m trying, so stop getting sarcastic, but it’s Stiles,” Derek snaps back. He pats at the window a last time, then turns around. “I never understood that guy, and that was _before_ he decided he wanted to have sex with you, so—”

“Do you,” Peter says, sharply and clearly. He waits for Derek to half-protest, then subside sullenly under Peter’s arched brow. “Smell. His scent. Do you smell anything different on him?”

Derek purses his lips. He looks as if he might just storm out on Peter in a fit of pique, but finally he heaves up a deep breath and shakes his head. “No, but again, I don’t spend my time sniffing him. Look, why are you asking me about him? Why not—”

“Lydia would never tell me all the details, even if they’re perfectly harmless, because it’s me,” Peter says.

“True,” Derek says after a second. “I guess maybe you shouldn’t have been such a dick to her when she was in high school.”

“I suppose I assumed you’d be willing to help me if only because, however much he annoys you, he _is_ pack to you these days, and you’ve finally learned how to value that,” Peter says. He doesn’t watch the way Derek’s head goes up, or the curl of the man’s fingers as their nails sharpen. He doesn’t watch the man at all, actually, though they are facing each other. Instead he listens to the jump of Derek’s heartbeat. “Since I realize it doesn’t really mean anything to you that I care for him, and that for all that I’ve done to you in the past, Derek, you’ve still never managed to make up for getting the only other people I’ve ever controlled myself for killed—”

Derek’s pulse booms out, as if his heart’s become a fired pistol. Then he hikes himself back up against the windowsill, snarling, his eyes glowing. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you, damn it,” he snaps. “I am, I just don’t—what do you think is going on with him? We just had those vampires—”

“He’s not a vampire,” Peter sighs. “I _live_ with him, Derek, do you really think I’d miss the signs?”

“Okay. So his smell is off. Is he a shifter now?” Derek says.

“I didn’t say his smell was off, I asked you if you’d noticed a chance in it,” Peter says. “Also, again, I live with him. I think I’d notice that.”

Derek just keeps his eyes from rolling. “Sure, with all that magic he messes around with. He can keep us from noticing he’s coming up, so maybe he’s found something to cover up what he’s turned into.”

“Magic can only go so far, and we have sex, Derek,” Peter says. Witheringly, and rightly so, he thinks. But then he thinks about last night, and that glimpse at Stiles’ eyes, and—and the way the man had _had_ him.

It must show, because Derek’s eyes narrow. “What?”

“That,” Peter says. “The sex. That was—it was different, too.”

Derek winces and turns away. He puts his hand up and runs it through his hair, half-obscuring his expression, and then he rubs at his mouth. “Like…like how,” he mumbles through his fingers, sounding as someone is forcing him at gunpoint.

“I don’t know,” Peter says after a long pause. “But it wasn’t the same.”

“Peter,” Derek says, and his tone makes Peter look up sharply. “Listen…do you—do you need to stay somewhere else till we figure this out?”

“With you?” Peter says, glancing around the apartment.

Derek grimaces, but his shoulders are braced back. “If you have to—but actually, I was thinking, Isaac just moved out of Scott’s place. And we should talk to Scott, too.”

“I don’t think I’m in danger,” Peter says. He’s a little bemused at how emphatic he sounds; he knows what Stiles means to him but he’s also hardly a besotted damsel, unable to see past an idealized picture of a relationship. “I don’t think he’s not himself, Derek. He’s still Stiles, it’s just that there’s…something different.”

“Well, you’re still talking to me about it,” Derek says, grudging with his worry, but sincere nonetheless. And his cleverest point of the conversation.

Peter nods in acknowledgement. “All right, you can go talk to Scott. But _do_ make it clear that this isn’t to get back to Stiles, and never mind about his silly scruples because if it is something, that’s the fastest way to blow things up.”

“All right, all right, I’m not an idiot,” Derek snaps. He jerks at his coat, pulling his collar up around his face, and then stalks past Peter to the door. “You talk like we haven’t been working with them for years.”

“Yes, yes, you know how to handle McCall,” Peter sighs. Though in truth, once the door shuts behind his nephew, he’s quite pleased at the way things have turned out. Derek may never quite see the point, but he certainly takes it well, and will be saving Peter rather a lot of time with the pack alpha.

**Author's Note:**

> So the rest of the story would have went: Peter and Derek consult with Scott, Scott says he's also noticed Stiles being a little off, the trio sort of stalk Stiles and pick up more clues, Peter finally confronts Stiles and Stiles reveals he's actually an angel. He was worried Peter wouldn't be okay with that because he's kind of sworn to work towards the ultimate good, but Peter tells him he's being ridiculous and _of course_ Peter doesn't mind committing sacrilege every night in the bedroom. Relieved, Stiles and Peter go and have more very energetic sex, wherein Peter embraces Stiles' increasing aggressiveness.
> 
> And then Stiles and Lydia have a convo and surprise! they're actually _fallen_ angels and Stiles isn't telling Peter 'cause even Peter's amorality has limits.
> 
> I was going to subvert genre by having Peter, who is knowledgeable and has no qualms about manipulating his partners, skip over the horrified denial part of the usual thriller and go straight to trying to figure out how to best turn things to his advantage, and I think that was coming out well. But the more I wrote, the less I was enthused by the planned twist. Because really, is Peter going to care about Stiles being long-view evil? Is Stiles realistically going to believe Peter would dump him over being supernatural (of _any_ flavor--I tried to salvage this by subbing in lots of other types of beings, but still came up with the same result)? The twist just ends up being this artificial plot development that contravenes the characterization, which, in case you haven't been reading my author's notes, is something I really, really hate.
> 
> But I like the sex scenes, and I like the way Peter's voice comes out, so I didn't want to just hit delete on all of it.


End file.
